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Friday, 26 August 2016

I wanted to capture different experiences of waiting in a poem without turning it into a list. I have nothing against list poems, they sometimes fit the bill, but I suspect they are an over used form.A few explanations:Half day closing [for those of you not as old as I am] was the practice of shops closing at lunch time one day in the week to enable the staff, who would work Saturdays, to have time off. In Widnes, where I grew up, it was a Thursday, across the river in Runcorn, it was a Wednesday. I do not know when the practice stopped. I would suspect in the 1980's.When I was a child the only shop open on a Sunday was the newsagents. There were laws about what could be sold on the Sabbath and as I remember nothing on the television, save religious programmes.

Different Types of Waiting

Queues
are too obvious an example,

even
though there are only five minutes

before
the last train will leave this station,

and
there are five people in front of you.

A
childhood in Widnes provided many opportunities:

half-day
closing;

shut
down Sundays;

and
endless afternoons of school rugby league.

Clock
watching at work may indicate

an
over familiarity with the task,

or
signal that it's time to find another job.

Then
there's waiting for a miracle,

as
I have been doing these past days,

hoping
the blood vessels in your head will heal

and
stop their relentless destruction,

this
ceaseless kaleidoscoping of your personality

into
an infinite parade of anxious strangers.

And
there is the time before the ambulance comes

to
take you to a place of safety,

now
they have found you a bed.

This
last seems the longest,

with
every minute stretched to the horizon.

This is still very much a work in progress.I was aiming for the power of the poem to be in the final two stanzas and hoped that the preceding three lulled the reader into a false sense of security.

On a lighter note I am delighted that Brooke Sharkey has completed recording her new album and that it will be released in October.You can read my interview with her here, and my review of her last ep here.Here is a sneak preview.

Saturday, 20 August 2016

Prizewinners
will also be invited to take part in a special Reading in Taunton

Closing
date 31st
October 2016 for online and postal entries

Alison
Brackenbury was
born in Lincolnshire in 1953, and comes from a long line of skilled
farm workers. She now lives in Gloucestershire and has published nine
collections of poems. Her work has won an Eric Gregory Award and a
Cholmondeley Award. She reviews poetry for leading journals,
including P N Review
and Poetry
London. Her work
has been broadcast many times on BBC Radio, and she has been
interviewed in the national press about her interest in promoting
poetry via the Internet, especially on Facebook and Twitter.

Her latest collection, Skies,
was published by
Carcanet in 2016. Skies
has been featured in The
Guardian, The Independent, The Poetry Book Society Bulletin, and
on Radio 4’s arts programme, Front
Row. The
award-winning poet Helen Mort has called it ‘her best, most urgent
collection to date … tender, exact and unflinching’. Skies
has also been selected as The
Observer's Poetry
Book of the Month. Kate Kellaway, the reviewer, wrote ‘The seasoned
craft and musicality of Alison Brackenbury’s poetry shine through
in this humble, haunting and humorous collection'.

More
information, including new poems and a blog, can be found at Alison’s
website:

Fee:
£4 for one poem;
£3 for each additional poem up to a maximum of 6 poems

Poems

Poems
may be in any style and on any subject. They must be the entrant’s
original and unaided work; in English and not a translation; have a
maximum of 40 lines per poem excluding the title and be printed or
printable on one side of A4 paper.

Up
to six poems per entrant may be submitted, provided each is on a
separate sheet and the correct entry fee is paid.

The
entrant’s name mustnotappear
on the poem.

Poems
must not have been published (in print or online), or have won a
prize in a previous competition, or be currently submitted to
another competition or for publication.

Members
of Fire River Poets and their immediate families are not eligible.

It
is regretted that entries cannot be returned.

The
judge’s decision is final and no correspondence can be entered
into.

Submission
of a poem implies the entrant’s acceptance of the rules.

Postal
Entries (with cheque or Money Order)

Poems
must be accompanied by the correct payment and a sheet of paper
giving titles of poems, entrant’s name, address, telephone number
and e-mail address.

Friday, 19 August 2016

Two brief poems of praise this post.The first was written recently and is about the end of summer, the cycle of the seasons.

The rain surprised me,

ambushed
as I was

by
my own indolence.

The
summer, falling hot,

had
led me to believe

such
days as these

could
go on forever,

until
outside of Exeter,

the
rain began to freckle the train windows.

The
first intimation of what is to come,

the
axial tilt and the fall

towards
the shortest day.

There
is a symmetry here – rejoice.

The second is an older poem that I have been working on for a number of years. That is to say I have never felt that it worked and every so often I pull it out from the pile of half completed poems and fiddle with it some more.Here is the latest version:

now
my four hour drive is forgotten

this
winter afternoon

a
string of starlings circle the bridge

they
wheel and flow in beauty

I
praise The Creator

who
makes such things possible

I had driven back to Widnes from Taunton, a journey of usually three and a half hours, it had taken me over four and I was feeling fed up. In the afternoon light that winter's day I did see a murmuration of starlings and the journey was worth that moment.

I have been in a Mountain Goats frame of mind this week but I leave you with Vidar Norheim. He has an ep out on the 25th August. You may know him from his work with Lizzie Nunnery. You can read my interview with Lizzie here, and my review of their second album here and their last ep here.Until next time...

Friday, 12 August 2016

A love poem today. I was asked to write a poem for my sister-in-law's renewal of her wedding vows. This was to mark the twenty five year anniversary of her marriage to my wife's brother. Such briefs can be difficult, no words may flow, or the deadline leads you to settle for second best. Happily this was not the case, though I spent a good two months pondering, searching for the right image.When it arrived it gave me the first stanza and the skeleton of the second.Again I have to thank the Secret Poets for their support and insight.

On the roof of the garage,

opposite
my bedroom window,

from
out of an abandoned sandbag,

I
have watched two poppies

explode
into blood red beauty.

Love
can erupt anywhere,

and
if we are blessed it will stay.

It
may not be easy, the soil too thin,

the
sun and rain capricious,

but
love will find a way.

The Secret Poets discussion centred on the use of the poppy as a metaphor for a robust, happy marriage, as it usually signifies death in war. I liked the idea of recasting the metaphor. The renewal was a wonderful happy affair and the poem kindly received.Recently I was Poet in Residence at the Warwick Folk Festival having been invited back from 2015. I ran a number of interesting workshops, the first on transforming a set of directions into a poem and the second attempting to capture something big by writing lots of little poems.I decided on the ocean, and here the best of my endeavours.

across the inlet she could hear the
sounds of her wedding feast as the tide bore her away

molecules
of water slide over one another, a fluid dance we mistake for ocean

we
carry the ocean inside us, created as we were to allow water to walk
across the land

she
had sailed across the globe before she recognised the same difference
of the oceans

fallen
from space, this is not the first place the congregations of the
ocean have met

I like the idea of the bride hearing the wedding feast as she flees the celebration, the idea has legs I think. At present I am working on an idea inspired by the line "the coal boatman's daughter" and it may well dovetail into that. Watch this space.

Friday, 5 August 2016

Apologies for the silence. Life has a habit of getting in the way, even of a poetry blog.The poem this post is a recent one and it unfolds as the experience did in real time. Sometimes I tinker with the sequence of events to give more contrast but not in this case.

Taking the Tow Path from the Allotment

Just
before the main road crosses over the canal,

on
a day so still,

it
could be a ribbon window on a submerged world,

I
see a tent under the water,

all
taut with tensioned poles.

The
days after the flood must have been like this.

The
works of man obliterated,

less
debris each sunrise,

each
corpse a feast for the fish

who
would suffocate in their turn.

I
watch the tent slide by, silent, top heavy.

Decide
on a photograph,

reach
for my phone,

then
realise there is a man

camped
under the bridge,

sat
stock still in the chaos of his life,

and
I stop.

He
stares into the pellucid waters,

his
face tells his story,

and
I walk on,

beyond
his tragedy,

past
the three people with the bottle of Lambrusco

and
little else, not even a plastic cup,

through
the skaters clouds of weed,

back
into my own life.

I do not think the tent belonged to the man under the bridge. I would have heard or seen it enter the water. I suspect it came from the green space by the locks. People camp there and it could have been thrown into the canal by someone wanting to move those people on.